If there were ever a fast-food staple that wasn’t a big, juicy burger, it’d be a savory fried chicken sandwich. It makes perfect sense as restaurant chains like Chick-fil-A have built a legacy from selling them. This is something that the fast-food chicken giant has become so proud of that they even trademarked a slogan stating, “We didn’t invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich.” To quickly answer the question you might be asking yourself: No, Chick-fil-A didn’t invent the chicken sandwich. Their culinary team are absolutely experts on the matter, undeniably making an art of something so simple. But create it? No, they did not. However, it does raise the questions of why the company would make the claim, and where the chicken sandwich actually came from.
In 1996, Chick-fil-A trademarked the slogan, and let’s be honest — this was just their marketing department being clever and cheeky, while probably also more than a little self-aware of their reputation for being expert purveyors of the chicken sandwich. Though this sandwich is now one of Chick-fil-A’s most ordered items, historically, there’s no way it invented the dish, as bread and chicken have been around for centuries at the very least, and Chick-fil-A has only had its doors open since 1946. However, what can be said is that it was one of the first major establishments to bring fast-food chicken sandwiches to the world. While Kentucky Fried Chicken served its first Southern-style chicken entrée in 1930, it didn’t come out with a chicken sandwich until the 1980s. Other direct competitors like Church’s Texas Chicken and Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen wouldn’t even come into being until 1952 and 1972, respectively.
The origins of the fried chicken sandwich are murky, but they don’t start with Chick-fil-A
Like many stories in food history, the original fried chicken sandwich is hard to pinpoint. The history of sandwiches in general is a little scandalous (being associated with a 24-hour gambling session), but its name and fame are mostly attributed to the fourth Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, in the 1700s. However, the idea of adding filling to bread predates that of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire.
Chicken itself has been a domesticated food source that can be traced back to roughly 8000 B.C. in Southeast Asia. It was shared with explorers who took it to Europe, and it was later brought to the Americas. When that chicken became fried is equally murky, but the seeds of the idea might arguably be traced to the late 1800s, with dishes like the Argentinian Milanesa (a breaded, fried meat cutlet) that would soon find its way between bread with the Mexican torta de Milanesa, a dish which involves meat (including chicken) done Milanesa-style and eaten between a bolillo roll. Still, this was not, in concept, the same dish as the fried chicken sandwich that Chick-fil-A would later claim to have invented.
Chick-fil-A’s specific claim has one pretty compelling piece of evidence against it, though. There have been several references online to an ad for a fried chicken sandwich special run by the Booker T Café in the 1936 issue of the Kansas Whip, a Black American publication. So ultimately, though Chick-fil-A didn’t invent the dish, it does have one of the best-ranked fast-food chicken sandwiches out there, and that’s something to be proud of.
